


Still Here.

by Avamarie



Category: Young Justice - All Media Types
Genre: Birdflash - Freeform, Dick Grayson is Nightwing, Fix-It of Sorts, Freeform, If You Squint - Freeform, Loose Canon, M/M, Mentions of Barry Allen - Freeform, Police Officer Dick Grayson, honestly i'm still angry about the wally west thing, mentions of Bruce Wayne - Freeform, no beta we die like men, speed force fuckery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-23 22:30:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19710778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avamarie/pseuds/Avamarie
Summary: After a grueling shift at the BCPD, Dick finds himself playing host to someone he had thought to be long gone.Or, in other words, the kids aren't all right, and apparently, the speed force hadn't actually been the end of one Wally West.





	Still Here.

He’s been here before. Face down against the course material of his couch cushions, staring at a TV screen that he hadn’t actually managed to turn on. Ignored it in passing as he dropped the jacket of his police uniform on the floor. Amazingly over that of the sad lump of his Nightwing suit that he’d stripped out of the moment he crawled in last night. This morning? —–Meh, whatever. 

“You look like hell, Dick.” 

The voice startles him; forces him right back into the unforgiving cold of his apartment — of the world in a fit of adrenaline. He jerks up, body tensing absently —– habitually slipping into a defensive stance, readying itself for a fight only to find…nothing. There’s no sign of forced entry when he takes in the swell of his well-worn door. it’s latch snugly flipped, flimsily locking the rest of the complex out for all the good he knows it’ll never do. The only tracks in the accumulation of dust beneath its rim are his own; and that leaves him grimacing in turn, he really should mop sometime soon. what would Alfie think? 

The window, much to his chagrin, is the same. No one’s jimmied it open any further than he had left it. A fact he knows by the Bat’s very own security system, the one he lifted from the cave a few months back, beeps a merry green hue at him. All signs go, no trouble here, it says. Not that it does much to lessen his building paranoia in the slightest. So, for what it's worth, Dick still takes a good ten minutes to check and clear his apartment. 

Checks the doors, the crawl spaces that he, a 5’10 man can slip into, and everywhere else he can think of before making his way back to the couch and unceremoniously dumping himself back into it. His body aches, exhaustion singing through his very core. Sweeping his world away in a dizzy spin of blurred greys ——- You haven’t been sleeping again Grayson. It’s just your mind playing tricks on you again. 

“Huh.”

He hears the voice mumble out and despite not being able to see straight, He tenses all over again. Waits for its owner to step out into the open. A hand creeps down the thick of his thigh, fingers twining over the smooth barrel of his police grade baton. There’s a sudden WHOOSH of air —- of electricity he knows too well, yet hasn’t felt since Wally’s death. And oh, how that fucks with his heart. Ratcheting his pulse to worrying heights and leaves it to thunder against his eardrums. But there’s a presence of yellow and red bleeding into his peripherals. A heavy, concerned gaze burrowing into him that he can feel and it urges him into moving. Has him listing forward until he’s face to face with another ghost.

Wally's face, still cowled, looks wistful. Those emerald eyes of his taking in the sight of one down and out Dick Grayson before glancing away in favor of examining the state of the Gothamite’s apartment. Wally shrugs then. actually shrugs before pulling the cowl back. 

Dick watches in disbelief as the guy stalks forward a step only to stop dead. “Well, we had a good run, didn’t we?” And doesn’t that hurt? Hurt in a way Dick hadn’t expected it to. Hurts because it’s not directed at him whatsoever, but spoken as though he’s addressing himself, completely unaware that Dick’s currently perceiving him. He watches because for the moment, that’s all his muddy brain can think to do. Sit there and watch as the ghost his brain has unkindly conjured forth from exhaustion leans back. His frown deepening and turns like he’s making to speed off and really it’s that thought alone, that Wally’s leaving again, that drives Dick forward, and has him reaching out for his dead best friend. 

His hand connects and stills over the warm pulse of the speedster in a desperate ploy in keeping him there, and it shocks him. Shocks him because he had expected his hand to whisk right through Wally’s —- had expected to fall flat on his face from his own stupidity. But instead, he’s met with a steady thrum of life. Of weight. 

“Rob?”

Dick refuses to look up. Can’t bear to face the possibility that he’s worked himself up to such a deranged point. “Rob?” Wally breathes again, his own shock paramount to Dick’s own as a red gauntlet presses into the line of his shoulder. 

Dick’s head snaps up to meet his freckled face and wild, wide green eyes then. He tracks the way Wally’s lips move, but the sound never reaches him because just as it all had started, Wally’s gone. Dick’s hand falling limp in the space his best friend had been just seconds prior. The only thing left that proves that what had just happened wasn’t a figment of his own imagination is that of a secondary scuffle of tracks in the disturbed dust that, upon further inspection, leads into his place but never circles back out. 

He’d actually been here, is all Dick can think as he unsteadily walks back into his living room and crashes down into his couch for what felt like the millionth time that night. A minute, or maybe an hour lapses, he’s not really sure which, before he’s digging out his cellphone and dragging up both Barry’s and Bruce’s direct number to send one, simple, harrowing, shaken group message. 

>> Wally’s alive…

**Author's Note:**

> I moved this from my Tumblr, and I know it's a bit short, and I might expand on it later. Maybe turn it into a chaptered work. We'll see.


End file.
